(Montreal) The Parti Québécois promises to raise the minimum wage to $18 an hour within three years and to strengthen the Pay Equity Act by providing for penalties for offending companies. How many ? Paul St-Pierre Plamondon mentions “thousands of dollars” without further details.
Posted at 10:36 a.m.
On this eve of Labor Day, the Parti Québécois is making a commitment to raise the minimum wage to $18 an hour within three years. Chief Paul St-Pierre Plamondon assured that the government has “a responsibility towards the approximately 200,000 workers” who earn the minimum wage.
The minimum wage being $14.25 per hour implies that a worker earns approximately $27,000 annually, which is less than the “sustainable” income threshold estimated at $30,000 per year.
“In its history, the Parti Québécois has always been the party of workers. To use René Lévesque’s expression: “we are a party with a bias favorable to workers”. It’s been part of our values since our founding, ”said the PQ leader in a café on rue Hochelaga, in Camille-Laurin (formerly Bourget) where he is seeking the vote.
Several labor organizations and community groups, such as the FTQ and the CSN, demanded last December that the minimum wage be set at $18 an hour.
Strengthen the Pay Equity Act
If it takes power on October 3, a PQ government would reform the Pay Equity Act to give it more bite. The PQ promises to impose penalties on offending companies. Some 26% of private companies in Quebec have not taken steps to comply with the law, indicated Paul St-Pierre Plamondon. “I can’t believe it,” he said.
The Parti Québécois has not set the amount of these penalties or the time that companies would be given to apply the law. “We will articulate it in the following way; we will generate a bill inspired by other laws that have penal clauses, punitive measures for companies and in committee [parlementaire]we can evaluate at what level we fix them. […] We did not draft the bill this morning, ”he explained.
Relaunched by journalists, the PQ leader finally mentioned that the amount of the penalties would be calculated in “thousands of dollars” with a gradation if the company is recalcitrant. For the prescribed timelines, “that’s the kind of thing” that would be established when the legislative text is studied in detail, he said. “There, we did not speak to the companies to see their point of view, which would be reasonable or not”, continued the chief.
The Parti Québécois promises to put forward seven measures to reform the Pay Equity Act to reduce the wage gap between men and women to 5% within five years. According to the estimate provided by the PQ, the gap has reached 9% for the time being.